Linus Torvalds has been awarded the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize. The award is offered by a Finnish foundation called Technology Academy Finland (TAF). TAF promotes scientific research and innovation to develop new technology which is based on humane values and has a positive impact on quality of life.
Linus Torvalds has been given this years award in recognition of his creation of the Linux kernel which is powering a large percentage of the Free operating systems running on PCs and other devices.

What is the Millennium Technology Prize ?

It is Finland’s tribute to life-enhancing technological innovation. The prize is awarded every second year for a technological innovation that significantly improves the quality of human life, today and in the future.

The prize is awarded by the TAF, an independent foundation established by Finnish industry, in partnership with the Finnish state.

Linus Torvalds Speaks

Software is too important in the modern world not to be developed through open sources. The real impact of Linux is as a way to allow people and companies to build on top of it to do their own thing. We’re finally getting to the point where “data is just data”, and we don’t have all these insane special communications channels for different forms of data.